Barbara van Schewick

Position / Title:

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and a leading expert on net neutrality.

Van Schewick’s research on the economic, regulatory, and strategic implications of communication networks bridges law, networking and economics. Her book Internet Architecture and Innovation (MIT Press 2010, Paperback 2012) is considered to be the seminal work on the science, economics and policy of network neutrality.

Her research has influenced net neutrality debates in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Europe, and has been cited by academics, stakeholders, regulatory agencies, and other public entities worldwide. The Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 and 2014 Open Internet Orders relied heavily on her work. Her work also shaped the European Union's recently adopted guidelines implementing the European Union's net neutrality law, the 2017 Orders on zero-rating by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, and the 2016 Order on zero-rating by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Van Schewick has testified before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and has advised policy makers, legislators, and regulators in the US, Latin America, and Europe. She has submitted White Papers, ex parte letters and comments to network-neutrality-related proceedings in the U.S., Canada, India, and Europe, and co- authored amicus briefs defending the FCC’s Order against Comcast and the FCC’s 2010 and 2014 Open Internet Orders. In 2007, van Schewick was one of three academics who, together with public interest groups, filed the petition that started the FCC’s network neutrality inquiry into Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer protocols. Her letters to the FCC regarding Verizon Wireless’ blocking of tethering applications and Verizon’s, AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s blocking of Google Wallet received widespread attention and motivated the FCC and members of Congress to formally or informally investigate these cases.

Her work has been discussed by leading print and online publications around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, the Economist, the BBC, the Times of India, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, BoingBoing, Wired or Ars Technica, and has been featured on radio and television in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.

Van Schewick received the Scientific Award 2005 from the German Foundation for Law and Computer Science and the Award in Memory of Dieter Meurer 2006 from the German Association for the Use of Information Technology in Law (“EDV-Gerichtstag”) for her doctoral work. In 2010, she received the Research Prize Technical Communication 2010 from the Alcatel-Lucent Stiftung for Communications Research for her “pioneering work in the area of Internet architecture, innovation and regulation.”

Barbara van Schewick’s salary, research support, and travel* are funded through the general budget of Stanford Law School and are independent of the budget and funding of the Center for Internet and Society. A small portion of her salary is funded by the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation for her supervision of two projects at the Center related to consumer privacy and to the Fourth Amendment. She has received no direct or indirect corporate funding for her work with the Center for Internet and Society or Stanford Law School, and the Center does not accept corporate funding for its network neutrality-related work.

On Sunday, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 822, the first state-level law that comprehensively restores all of the net neutrality protections of the 2015 Open Internet Order.

Here’s my statement:

“Today was a historic moment in the battle to bring back net neutrality in the United States. SB 822 comprehensively restores to California all of the net neutrality protections from the 2015 Open Internet Order that the FCC repealed in 2017.

On Friday August 31, the California Senate gave final approval to Senator Scott Wiener and Sen. Kevin De León’s SB 822, which would adopt net neutrality protections for California. The bill now heads to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature before September 30.

On June 20, SB 822 had its first committee hearing in the California Assembly. The bill, authored by Senator Scott Wiener, sought to bring back net neutrality to California and restore all of the important protections that the FCC voted to eliminate in December. It was widely viewed as a net neutrality model bill that would set the standard for other states. But instead of passing the bill, the committee adopted amendments that effectively gutted it, removing critical protections at a time when they are more important than ever.

The California Senate's Energy and Utilities Committee published its analysis of Senator Scott Wiener's California net neutrality bill on Monday morning. It’s bad. Here’s a short overview of the suggested amendments and a rebuttal of the key arguments related to interconnection and access charges.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

On Wednesday November 22, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai published his draft order outlining his plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet. His proposal would leave both the FCC and the states powerless to protect consumers and businesses against net neutrality violations by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon that connect us to the Internet.

Earlier this week Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced a radical plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet.

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Barbara van Schewick. I’m a Professor at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Center for Internet and Society there; I also have a courtesy appointment at Stanford’s Electrical Engineering Department. I have a PhD in computer science and a law degree. I’m here as an independent academic whose research for the past 16 years has focused on the relationship between Internet architecture, innovation and regulation. The FCC’s 2010 and 2015 Open Internet Rules relied heavily on my work. My work also informed TRAI’s 2016 Order on zero-rating and the European Union’s recently adopted guidelines implementing the European Union’s net neutrality law.

The post below is an open letter to European citizens, lawmakers and regulators, from our founder and Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Barbara van Schewick, and Professor Larry Lessig. Join the conversation in the comments below or on Twitter using #savetheinternet or #netneutrality.

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"Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick told CRTC commissioners they could “absolutely” set a precedent in other jurisdictions.

The CRTC must choose whether to deal with zero-rating complaints as it stands now on a case-by-case basis, ban it altogether or develop a set of guidelines on when it is acceptable.

“I do believe there is precedential value,” said van Schewick, whose warmly received presentation argued against zero-rating especially when service providers own the content, stating it could harm innovation and competition.

"Ultimately, in addition to soliciting comments from the public until June 17, the CRTC asked a wide range of experts to contribute to the hearing, including Danish Internet economics and policy expert Roslyn Layton, Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, and even Reddit, with the CRTC soliciting the website’s Internet-savvy Canadian users for feedback and adding more than 1,200 of their comments to the public record."

"The neutrality struggle seemed too close to call just a few months ago when BEREC published draft guidelines on how the rules might be implemented by EU member states in June, and then, taking a leaf out of the FCC playbook, launched a public consultation harvesting nearly half a million responses, most of them presumably pro neutrality.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Stanford Cryptography Policy Project, we are holding an afternoon event highlighting our research and accomplishments over the past year. As our keynote speakers, it is our pleasure to welcome the Honorable Stephen W. Smith, Magistrate Judge of the Southern District of Texas, and Paul S. Grewal, former Magistrate Judge of the Northern District of California.

Over 800 attendees registered at the State of the Net Conference (SOTN) in 2015. The conference provides unparalleled opportunities to network and engage on key Internet policy issues. SOTN is the largest Internet policy conference in the U.S. and the only one with over 50 percent Congressional staff and government policymakers in attendance.

A Brave New Era? Or, Back to the Future? Are we in 1934? 1993? Or, 2015? The FCC’s order on the open internet – What did the FCC really do and what will it mean for internet service providers, online music and video companies, e-commerce companies, transit providers and consumers?

"Veronica B.: Look at it this way. Imagine Amazon started a larva farm too, and they could pay for faster internet speeds, get on an internet fast lane, and advertise to their customers in a way that Patrick or any startup bug business couldn’t. See the problem? Okay, the edible bug-growing business might not be a priority for Amazon at the moment, but did you think Amazon would ever buy a grocery chain until they bought wholefoods? 10 years ago, did you think Google would get into self-driving cars?

In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.